Blockchain and Gaming: Will It Work?

The pandemic has virtually slowed down a lot of activities and businesses—but not the gaming industry. In March, when the majority of countries imposed a lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19, the gaming industry saw a huge increase in player population and sales.

In that month alone, Steam saw its highest number of concurrent users—a record peak of 20.31 million. And it’s not just about people playing and buying games, live gamers (live streamers) also saw an increased number of audiences since the lockdown.

Twitch, a live gaming streaming platform, recorded over 2 billion hours worth of video gameplay by April 2020. It’s the highest record yet—and is even set to break more viewership records for the rest of 2020.

In a new study, young people spend 3 hours and 25 minutes every week watching other people play video games. In contrast, only 2 hours and 30 minutes of viewing time are recorded for traditional sports. The numbers are clearly telling us that the gaming industry did not just gain a huge base of players, but it is gaining a major audience as well.

So what about Blockchain?

When we talk about gaming, people don’t normally correlate that with Blockchain technology. At best, the technicalities of gaming usually dwell on computer hardware, video/gaming cards, consoles, designs, and graphics.

However, Blockchain technology can have great uses for every avid gamer. Blockchain, being a secure and decentralized network, could come in handy when developers and players need an in-game item stored in a reliable system.

This could mean that players—not the creators or developers of the game, would own or manage the in-game items and characters that are stored in the Blockchain. These tokenized in-game assets would be owned and licensed by the player who owns them. And this creates a legitimate and highly secure in-game marketplace in the process wherein players can either buy, sell, or even trade with one another!

Blockchain would truly be a game-changer for the industry. But this does not come with a lot of issues. Although the system seems beneficial to the regular gamer, the interest of developers and game publishers should also be taken into account. Most importantly, would they be willing to easily transfer the ownership and license of in-game items and characters through a Blockchain system? It may not be that easy.